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QuietRagingWaters

~ Life With An Alcoholic Husband

QuietRagingWaters

Tag Archives: alcoholic household

PEACE, PROGRESS AND OTHER EXCITING NEWS

14 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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alcoholic father, alcoholic household, alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, divorce, wife of alcoholic

I started this blog as a way to support other women going through the hell of living with an alcoholic husband or partner while trying to process my own painful trip through Hades.

I fear I haven’t been very successful in that I have been far from consistent in my blogging. About a year ago, I thought the issue must be that I was ready to move past being married to an alcoholic. I couldn’t really write about being married to an alcoholic, I reasoned, because I was done being defined by being married to an alcoholic. To this end, I started a new blog: WrenRWaters.com

This was to be a blog not about being married to an alcoholic but about moving beyond being married to an alcoholic.

But just as a house divided cannot stand, a writer divided cannot write. Every time I had an idea for a blog post, I would question: was this an “alcoholic husband” sort of post or more a “moving past” alcoholic husband post? In the end, it became no post.

To the rescue, as often has been the case in my years as a writer and the wife of an alcoholic, was my friend, Linda Bartee of the Immortal Alcoholic blog. (immortalalcoholic.blogspot.com) She and I are always cooking up something between us and so it came to be that I will post on her blog once a week – Monday morning – with an excerpt from my book, “The Alcoholic Husband Primer: Survival Tips For The Alcoholic’s Wife.” I first published this book in 2016 but recently re-published an updated 2nd edition.

So if you are just climbing into your boat for this trip down the Styx River, I hope you will check out Linda’s blog, immortalalcoholic.blogspot.com for some insight into the things I wished I had known in the beginning. And if you’ve been on the river for awhile now, check out my blog, WrenRWaters.com for how I finally took control of this boat called My Life and am steering it into more peaceful waters.

Feeling The Feelings

01 Friday Nov 2019

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alcoholic father, alcoholic household, alcoholic husband, divorce, living in an alcoholic marriage, wife of alcoholic

You can’t swing a metaphysical cat without hitting a writer, speaker, sage or motivational guru who will tell you that before anything – before the great job offer or the new dream house or the sports car in the driveway – comes into your life, you have to first feel the emotions of that thing. Everyone on the forefront of this whole metaphysical movement knows that the emotions are the horse and the manifestation the cart. Of course, the majority of us put the cart before the horse, declaring once that new job is here, the house is ours and/or the kazillion horse power of Italian engineering is puring under our buns, then we will be happy and satisfied.

But it’s the other way around the sages/gurus/random bloggers say.

Feel the feelings first.

Feel the joy.

The satisfaction.

The happiness of leaving your dream house to drive your dream car to the office of your dream job.

But recently, I realized something rather powerful.

Feeling the feelings ALSO allows you to bring forward the doubts, hesitaitons and limiting beliefs you may be having about achieving that trifecta of life’s success.

I started thinking about the day I move into my own house.

I was mentally watching the movers pack up my share of stuff and load it onto a truck.

I was bringing all the excitment and happiness and relief I will no doubt feel.

And then I got to the backyard.

We have one of those nice, big wooden playsets that my kids “grew up” on. That would move with me because there are young nieces and nephews in the family who will be visiting at my new house. As my mind saw it being dis-assembled and loaded onto the moving truck, I was suddenly struck by such sadness and grief. This house, that I hate so much, that I curse on a nearly daily basis, that I dream of leaving one day is the house where my children grew up. The house where all their holiday and summer and daily memories were created. Sure, they aren’t truly grown up and out of the house but they are teenagers. The new house, my house, will not be the house of their childhood.

It’s not reason to stay.

I know that.

But it was powerful (and important. Maybe even vital!) for me to feel that un-realized grief and loss. Is that was has been inadvertently holding me back?

It seems it would be (should be?) easy to end a marriage to someone who has a drinking problem, screams obscenities at you and spends his days checked out.

But it’s not.

Far from it.

So while I know that I need to dwell in the good feelings, the happy feelings, the feelings of success and contentment, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to occasionally let myself feel the feelings of loss. Pain. Grief.

So I can move past them.

My Heart Is Broken

19 Sunday Aug 2018

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alcoholic father, alcoholic household, alcoholic husband, growing up with an alcoholic

We went on a “day trip” yesterday to hike in the mountains.

We used to do this sort of thing as a family “all the time.”

I don’t know when we stopped.

Not all at once.

Just one day we didn’t.

Until another day we didn’t.

Until we just didn’t.

But yesterday we tried.

I don’t know why.

It was a disaster though I suspect not a disaster that anyone else noticed.

(Or did they?)

I felt like the only sober person at a party of drunks.

My family is short with one another, they snipe at one another and there seems to be a constant flow of ridicule.

No one can answer one another nicely or with a nice tone.

It seems no matter what anyone has to say to another, their voice is laced with hostility.

I suspect much of it is just “habit” now.

It’s my husband’s fault.

Yes, it is.

An alcoholic in the household is the proverbial bad apple.

No one is rubbing off on him.

He’s rubbing off on all of us.

Time To Triple The-F Down

11 Monday Jun 2018

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alcoholic father, alcoholic household, alcoholic husband, Gary Vee, married to an alcoholic

View this post on Instagram

. For all the parents. & For all the kids. – To all the “Ryan’s” our there, so many complaining out there, parent saying kids need a kick in the pants, kids saying parents just don’t understand, my thing is this… stop debating and complaining, if you’re so right, PROVE IT. – Tag the entire internet.. especially your best friends. – #parenting #graduation #careergoals #careeradvice #proveit #entitlement #entrepreneur #entrepreneurmindset #entrepreneurs

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Jun 9, 2018 at 11:49am PDT

I can’t get enough of this guy Gary Vee because he is so spot on!

I was watching this video and thought,

“I wonder what he would say if I told him how my marriage was killing me?”

And while obviously I can’t literally answer for him, I’ve watched enough of his videos now to think his answer might go something like this:

“Fuck him! Get the fuck out! Look, I’m not just some cold-hearted bastard but it all comes down to this: your life or your marriage. And if you spouse is dragging you down. If he’s making it so you can’t live your life, that you are WASTING this one opportunity you have at this thing called living, then you have to make the hard choices, the tough decisons.”

Yep, that’s what I think he would say.

Happy Halloween

31 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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alcohoilc holidays, alcoholic, alcoholic and Christmas, alcoholic and Thanksgiving, alcoholic family, alcoholic household, alcoholic husband, Halloween

I love Halloween.

When my first born/oldest son was little, he loved it too.  He always wanted to decorate and fully immerse himself, our home and our lives in it.

Except back then I loved CUTE Halloween.

You know, happy little jack-o-lanterns and haggy but friendly, witches.

My son, just a little guy, loved the gory, scary, spooky, macabre Halloween.

You know, the skeletons, skulls and meat cleavers sort of Halloween.

I tried to marry the two, sort of ease myself into his Halloween while encouraging him to love my version of Halloween.

He was having none of it.

Precocious from the start, he stated with such conviction I had no choice but to be swayed,

“Halloween is about scaring the undead back to their graves.  How are fairies and unicorns going to scare anything back to its grave?”

Now, how close his then-five year old interpretation of Halloween was, I don’t know but it seemed pretty convincing to me.  I had to concede his point and ditch the happy Jacks and smiley witches.

I think I have been collecting skeletons, skulls and meat cleavers ever since.

Holidays – as in Thanksgiving and Christmas – tend not to go well in the alcoholic household but Halloween seems to escape the alcoholic’s wrath.  Maybe ’cause no one is going to notice his drunken slur or lop-sided stagger amongst the zombies and skeletons walking down the street.

Either way, before we get into the full-blown alcoholic, uh I mean holiday, season, I want to wish you a Happy Halloween.

I hope it was frightful in only the best way.

 

 

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